The great thing about democracies is that voters can sling out a government they are fed up with or find lacking. In Britain, before we evolved our democratic system, there used to be localised warfare, assassinations and, finally, a civil war (1642-51). This is not to say the departure of Tony Blair, who won his third election in 2005 and still had three years to serve before obliged to fight a new election, was not preceded by bitter political conflict.

When Labour leader John Smith died of a heart attack in 1994, there were two talented politicians, on the ‘modernising’ wing of the party, jostling to take his place: Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. At a dinner in the Granita restaurant, the two friend / rivals discussed the situation. Brown agreed not to stand against his like-minded colleague but claimed ever after that they had agreed Tony would stand down after a while and let him have a go at steering the ship. Tony’s record of the event contains no such condition.

Friendship and politics rarely mix easily at the top, and soon this disagreement over what transpired turned into possibly the biggest feud in British politics since Gladstone and Disraeli – but at least they led different parties. Brown took his revenge by being obstructive and difficult in dealings with Blair, using his position as Chancellor of the Exchequer to frustrate some of Blair’s ideas. In Cabinet he would sometimes refuse to listen to the meeting chaired by his prime minister, preferring ostentatiously to read and scribble on his own papers.

Eventually, in autumn 2004, exhausted by the feud and weakened by the intractable Iraq War, Blair declared he would not fight the election after the one due in 2005. But a groundswell of opposition developed over Blair’s subservience to US foreign policy over the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006. Brown’s fingerprints were discerned by many on the attempt to remove Blair at the party conference in that year and he was forced to accept that he would bow out within a year.

Sometime in the spring, he named the day of his departure as June 27, 2007: no electoral defeat, no ‘coup,’ but all those following the events knew he had been virtually forced out. The party confirmed Brown, as the only candidate, would be the next party leader and hence PM last Sunday, and this Wednesday Blair took his final Prime Ministers’ Questions. Ian Paisley, the fiery leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (many thanks to Neil for suggesting this clarification), paid a graceful tribute to the man who has done most to end the conflict in Northern Ireland and, when Blair finished answering his final question the whole House applauded (unprecedented, as MPs never applaud) and then gave him a standing ovation. He then proceeded to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation while Gordon later made the same journey to ‘kiss hands’ (as ceremony has it) and agree to lead the government until the next election.

Smooth transition?

It might have looked like it from outside, but in reality it was the culmination of a sustained fight by the dour, policy-driven Scottish son of a preacher against the glamorous, gifted, charismatic ‘actor politician’ Tony Blair. In the Middle Ages, such a conflict might have entailed wars and beheadings; the present system does not exclude conflict but does not spill over into violence.